Wesley Corpus

W. answer it to his own conscience, to write prefaces and recommendations to Hymns which he does not believe?” There is the mistake. I do believe them; although still I will not be answerable for every expression which may occur therein. But as to those expressions which you quote in proof of final perseverance, they prove thus much, and no more, that the persons who use them have at that time “the full assurance of hope.” Hitherto, then, Mr. Hill has brought no proof that I contradict myself. Of Imputed Righteousness. 24. “Blessed be God, we are not among those who are so dark in their conceptions and expressions. “We no more deny,” says Mr. W., ‘the phrase of imputed righteousness, than the thing.’” (Page 23.) It is true: For I continually * Page 21. affirm, to them that believe, faith is imputed for righteous ness. And I do not contradict this, in still denying that phrase, “the imputed righteousness of Christ,” to be in the Bible; or in beseeching both Mr. Hervey and you, “not to dispute for that particular phrase.” But “since Mr. W. blesses God for enlightening him to receive the doctrine, and to adopt the phrase of ‘imputed righteousness; how came he to think that clear conceptions of the doctrine were so unnecessary, and the phrase itself so useless, after having so deeply lamented the dark conceptions of those who rejected the term and the thing?” It was neither this term, “the imputed righteousness of Christ,” nor the thing which Antinomians mean thereby, the rejection of which I supposed to argue any darkness of conception. But those I think dark in their conceptions, who reject either the Scripture phrase, “faith imputed for righteousness,” or the thing it means. 25. However, to prove his point, Mr. Hill goes on : “This doctrine” (of the “The use of the term” (the “imputed righteousness of “imputed righteousness of Christ”) “I have constantly Christ”) “is not scriptural; believed and taught for near it is not necessary; it has eight-and-twenty years.” done immense hurt.”e “‘It has done immense hurt, says Mr. W.; ‘but here is no contradiction.’ Whether there be or not, there is a plain concession from Mr. W. himself, that he has been preaching a doctrine for eight-and-twenty years together, which has done immense hurt.” Let this (one instance out of an hundred) be a specimen of Mr.